Today I wanted to share something a little different with everyone. I was able to sit down with my boss and one of the P.H.D. students from UNIS and have a nice long lunch the other day. Some of the topics to come up were healthcare, school, and general economy. Now I can't say that I am an expert on the way everything is done in the US but I knew enough to be amazed by the system's that Norway has in place. To start off with college is free, well the school is at least. Students only pay for housing and food, which certainly also add up but not in the way that college costs in the US do. They couldn't believe when I told them how much we pay for schooling and the average amount of loans that students were taking out. It made so much more sense to me to be able to go to a school simply due to grades and getting in, and not have the cost of the school be a main deciding factor. Then when they mentioned public healthcare I couldn't believe how much their government supported them. They even showed me a clip on you tube from Micheal Moore's movie Sicko. The only part being that because Norway is so good Mr. Moore didn't include the clip in his video because he thought people wouldn't believe him.... So check this out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGTzbj3fRSw

Now who doesn't want to move to Norway?

The other thing I have to share with everyone today is the climate change up here. I have now been here a little over 4 weeks and although it just creeps above freezing on a nice day the snow has been melting. The first shot is a picture I took within the first week I was here.

This is the mountain looked like last weekend from my hike.

Strange thing to think of the arctic in the summer time and snow melting!